“…In the Catholic Church, famous converts played a role of the greatest importance between the 19th and the first half of the 20th century. But then silence fell upon conversions. They became almost a taboo to be hidden…

“One of these [new] converts, Pietro Barcellona, is also the author, together with three other post-Marxist thinkers, of a manifesto on “the anthropological emergency” that has met with great astonishment.

“And this is the second noteworthy fact. The other three authors of the manifesto are the professors Giuseppe Vacca, an historian; Mario Tronti, a philosopher and political scientist; and Paolo Sorbi, a sociologist. The last of these is Catholic, the other two are not.”